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"The Scariest Climate Change Graph Just Got Scarier"

A new reconstruction of the global temperature over the past 11,000 years only confirms the unprecedented warming shown in the "hockey stick" graph which has become the target of anti-science climate deniers.

"Back in 1999, Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann released the climate change movement's most potent symbol: The "hockey stick," a line graph of global temperature over the last 1,500 years that shows an unmistakable, massive uptick in the 20th century, when humans began to dump large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It's among the most compelling bits of proof out there that human beings are behind global warming, and as such has become a target on Mann's back for climate denialists looking to draw a bead on scientists.

Today, it's getting a makeover: A study published in Science reconstructs global temperatures further back than ever before—a full 11,300 years. The new analysis finds that the only problem with Mann's hockey stick was that its handle was about 9,000 years too short. The rate of warming over the last 100 years hasn't been seen for as far back as the advent of agriculture."